


Whole (Lot of History)

by euhemeria



Series: And, In Sign of Ancient Love, Their Plighted Hands They Join [94]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied Relationships, Intergenerational Trauma, imposter syndrome, tiny little itty bitty hint of pharmercy at the end but not at all the Point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:20:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28908471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euhemeria/pseuds/euhemeria
Summary: People see a legacy.  People see Ana, the hero.  People see the name Amari and think of the woman Ana presented to the world, and not the woman she was, in private, and they think that Fareeha wants to be that, some mythic figure, some larger than life protector, perfect and unshakable.  She does not.Or,Fareeha grapples with the notion of legacies, and carving out a place for herself when the world wants to see her as an extension of her mother.
Series: And, In Sign of Ancient Love, Their Plighted Hands They Join [94]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/508281
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	Whole (Lot of History)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bigsleepy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigsleepy/gifts).



> sometimes i write things

An assassination, a moon landing, a bombing; cultural memory stands as an important touchstone, one generation to the next, is the scissors which cuts the cloth from which a cohort’s experience is shaped. Right before Fareeha was born, there was a generation defining moment, the beginning of the Omnic Crisis, and no matter how old she gets, no matter how many people a handful of years older than herself Fareeha befriends, no matter what history books she reads, or old news broadcasts she rewatches, she can never experience it, that moment, knows she will never know what it was to live in that generation before her, to have known the world as it was before, have felt safe, in the pre-Crisis years, and have that sense of security so suddenly shattered, a rug the world did not know it was standing on pulled out from underneath them. Always, Fareeha’s world has been one in which the Crisis happened, and always, it has been one in which Overwatch existed.

Growing up, it is a strange thing to hear others talk about the Crisis. They try not to say too much in front of her, most of them, because they think that children need not know war—never matter that children die, too—until they hear her mother’s name, and then it is like something shifts inside of them, and they are speaking not to Fareeha, anymore, but to an extension of her mother, as if, when they tell her that her mother has done so much for them, thank her for her mother’s service, their words will reach Ana’s ears.

(Sometimes, they do, but Ana is never thankful, has Fareeha switched from one second grade classroom to another when she hears what Fareeha’s teacher said about her, about what her work meant to the world. At the time, Fareeha cannot understand it, cannot see that her mother will never feel the hero she is being told she is, cannot see how it hurts her, to be praised, when she feels like the war is taking from her everything that makes her good, and whole, and worthy of love and admiration.)

Some awareness of the war, Fareeha has, but she knows that there is much she cannot understand—is prevented from knowing, by design and by accident of her birth. When people speak with nostalgia for the past, Fareeha can never truly understand what it is they are missing, cannot imagine a world where life is any different, where she does not need to worry about human and Omnic tension, does not see footage of yet another brutal skirmish on the news. It never quite feels real to her, that past that others miss, feels like a story in a book. 

And maybe it is just that—a story they tell themselves. The world was never peaceful; always there was war, was injustice, was poverty and suffering. The only difference now is the randomness of the targets, the inability to insulate oneself, any longer, from the terror of humanity, from the dawning realization that no amount of wealth, of power, will stop one from dying.

(This is not to say, of course, that those with privilege are not better off than the rest of them, for they are, they _are_ , are the first to evacuate, and the first the doctors treat, but that is something which is invisible to Fareeha, as a child, when all she knows is that adults around her are saying how terrifying the Crisis is, how random the violence, unable or unwilling to see what else plays a role in who becomes a victim, and who a survivor. Later, Fareeha’s father will explain all of this to her, but in the early years, she believes what the rest of the world is telling her, that this is something unavoidable, is random, is chaos.)

Even after the Crisis ends, officially, tensions remain high, and there is a sense, in the world, that something changed forever, two months before Fareeha’s birth, is a mourning, a trauma that touches her, colors so much of the world which she lives in, that she feels she can never _quite_ grasp. Once, the world was different, once, it felt safer, once, it was unthinkable, that every Omnic in an entire city might suddenly turn on the humans around them, moving simultaneously such that no one ever had a chance to warn their loved ones, to say goodbye, to understand that what was happening to them, in that instant, was not an isolated thing. Once, there was a moment of terror—and Fareeha tries to be moved by that, she does, but it is so, so hard to find it shocking, when for the entirety of her life, that is something that has happened already. To her, the unthinkable shall never be that, will be instead only a piece of history, will be nearly mundane, because not a day in her life has gone by that it has not been mentioned in some way.

So she feels a disconnect with the world—not the war she was born into, not the violence of it, not the danger, the fear, but the peaceful world, the world that comes after the Crisis. To her, returning to normal will never be that, for she has not known normal, has not known peace, and so she sees now still all the places where the violence continues, and cannot numb herself to them, cannot tell herself that it is happening far away from her, and she is safe.

Still, she does not feel much fear. This is the world as she has always known it, a terrible dangerous place, where sometimes, something like the Crisis just _starts_ , and the people whose actions might have caused such a thing, knowingly and unknowingly, are never the ones caught in the crossfire. This is her world: one of terrible injustice, of suffering, of pain, and she knows she cannot ignore that just because the fighting has died down in Europe, in North America, enough for some to declare peace. Elsewhere, people are still suffering in the reconstruction, are still not in a place where peace with their neighbors is an option, and she cannot simply turn a blind eye, knows she must help, somehow.

It is not because of her name, not really, is not because of the expectations the world placed on her, as Ana Amari’s daughter. She knows that is what others think of her, that they see her as an extension of the work her mother did, of that legacy, but that is not her reason. Fareeha does not feel _home_ in peacetime, because she has never known it, only feels unease, and the sting of injustice.

Of course her mother’s work, her reputation, had an impact on Fareeha; it would be foolish for her to deny that. She grew up seeing her mother as a hero, and even if, as she matures, she understands that Ana does not think of herself that way, thinks of war as a terrible thing, with all participants worse off for having experienced it, some part of her _does_ want to be like her mother, does want to do what everyone told her that her mother is doing, saving the world. Of course it matters to her that she make her mother proud, that she lives up to what others expect of her, as an Amari, that she not feel like she is disappointing the world around her. That, she has never denied, could never. Of course she wants her mother’s approval, and always will—but it is not for Ana that Fareeha enlists, and that is the truth, no matter what others may think of her decision, may think of her. It is not for Ana that Fareeha becomes a soldier, is not for her mother that she wants to join Overwatch, and to protect innocent people.

It is for herself. It is for the scared little girl who cannot imagine a world at peace, and the woman who, almost two decades later, will forever feel ill at ease in it, will always worry that _something_ is going to happen, is going to go devastatingly wrong, for that was the world she was born into.

At least, if she is on the front lines, she knows where the fighting is happening, knows who her enemy is. 

This, her mother will never understand, can never. Ana fought for peace, to shield her from all of this, and she can never admit to herself that she could not give that to her daughter, cannot allow herself to see that Fareeha’s world has always been shaped by war, even when it happened on another shore.

(To admit that, for Ana, would be to admit that all she has suffered, all the suffering she has inflicted, has been for naught, that all of her work has spared no one, and nothing. So she will not see it, can never look at her daughter and know the truth of her existence. For Ana, Fareeha’s life must be one shielded from pain, and so she thinks it will destroy Fareeha, going to war, because she cannot see that her daughter was born into it.)

Maybe this generation after Fareeha will understand what it is their grandparents mean, when they speak of peace, but Fareeha knows that she never will be able to understand it, what the world was like before her birth, will be separated from those who came before her by an invisible line, drawn at the point where the Crisis began. Even when she looks like she is existing in the same place as the rest of them, crossing over into that other world, into that before time, is impossible. 

In many ways, Fareeha’s relationship with her own mother is characterized by this same distance. She hears about her mother, the hero, her mother, the savior, and even, eventually, her mother, the martyr, but none of these is the Ana Fareeha has known, none of these is the woman who loves Fareeha too much to support her, in doing what she believes is right, is the woman who keeps a tally of the people she has saved, and those she has killed, and weeps, when she thinks her daughter asleep, for the fact that the number will never be equal, is the woman who taught Fareeha to defend herself, to be strong, to be independent, and hates more than anything that her daughter no longer needs her, like she might have once, refuses to see that Fareeha learned, and learned well.

Ana the hero exists, somewhere in all of that, but Fareeha has never known her, has known only a woman torn apart by all she has seen, all she has done.

People think Fareeha is emulating her mother, when she goes to war, and Fareeha cannot correct them, cannot tell them that she thinks the Crisis destroyed her mother, has been watching for years as she crumbles, and is powerless to stop it. Why would Fareeha want to emulate that? Why would Fareeha want to be that woman?

(Because she knows nothing else.)

No, Fareeha is proud of her mother, she is, for all that Ana has sacrificed, for all that she has done for other people, but Fareeha does not want to _become_ her, never has, can see all the ways in which to do such a thing would destroy her, too. That they walk the same path is not a coincidence, quite, but the truth is this: Fareeha was born into the trauma Ana experienced in the Crisis. Much of the damage war might have done to her was already complete before she ever enlisted, and so she holds no illusions about what it will mean, to go into that world.

But she goes anyway. She goes anyway, because her mother’s dream was to create a world in which children might not know war, and that… that Fareeha can try to continue. She is not playing at being her mother, like so many people seem to think she is, is not a repeat of Ana, or an extension of her, is instead a continuation of that legacy, of that dream—because Ana’s work is not over. The Crisis is not over, not in truth, its effects still rippling out across their world. 

So she is not her mother, to say the Crisis is done, and that children are able, now, to grow up happy, she is not the woman Ana was before—a woman who is just as much a stranger as the idea of peace—about to be hardened by something she has never known, she is a person unto herself, one who runs happily towards gunfire because in a way, it feels like she has been doing so her entire life, feels familiar.

This is continuity.

Still, people see a legacy. People see Ana, the hero. People see the name _Amari_ and think of the woman Ana presented to the world, and not the woman she was, in private, and they think that Fareeha wants to be that, some mythic figure, some larger than life protector, perfect and unshakable.

She does not. That woman never existed, not really, was, like the peace before the Crisis, and after it, an illusion, something that existed only in the minds of the masses, who longed for some sort of comfort, some sort of savior, and gave to Overwatch that role. What Fareeha is continuing—not emulating—is something far messier, far more human, far less perfect.

But others see her, and they see she is not her mother, and they find her lacking. She knows that they do.

She is not Horus, is not Captain Amari, and neither was her mother, not really, not in the way everyone seems to believe, neither _is_ she, living now as the Shrike, where no one knows her, and no one can project their own needs onto her. She is not perfect, and neither was Ana, but she cannot say that, for the world thinks her mother dead, and if she said _My mother was not a hero_ , people would think her bitter, would think her a shadow of a great woman, one who cannot face the fact that she is not the woman they made her mother into. In truth, Fareeha is not bitter, not about that, because Ana never thought herself a hero, only a soldier, as Fareeha is now, but the world did not know that, and Fareeha cannot make them see what they do not want to, cannot make them know the parts of her mother which would not bring them comfort.

Fareeha’s mother does not belong to her, not anymore—and maybe she never did. Once Overwatch ended the Crisis, at least officially, Ana became the property of the public imagination, became something beyond herself, and neither she nor Fareeha can control that, can control how she was and is seen, what her legacy means to the rest of the world.

(Fareeha is not bitter—not about that, anyway. A need for heroes, she can understand, particularly for those who grew up before the Crisis, who cling desperately to anything that feels like normalcy, so that they can avoid confronting the fact that the world that was before is now lost to them forever. By ending the Crisis, Ana and the others in Overwatch seemed, just for a moment, to bring back the before time, and so she became, to them, a symbol, and far be it from Fareeha to take that from them. She is, however, bitter that her mother left her to this knowledge, ‘died,’ and in so doing made herself even more of a myth, of a legend, avoided any of the criticism that the rest of Overwatch now draws, lives in the minds of others forever as a hero—and left Fareeha knowing that it was not true, none of it, with no one with whom she can discuss that fact. Her father still thinks her mother dead, and so will not ‘speak ill’ of her, even if that means only speaking the truth, and Fareeha is left alone to scream that _She was not perfect, she was human, and I am no less than her._ )

When people see Fareeha, they see her as she is: a soldier, and a good one, but not a hero. They see her and they know that she is human, that she is flawed, that she makes mistakes, and that she cannot save them all, will not. Despite the fact that the same might be said of anyone, despite the fact that much of what they feel, when they see her, and know her to not be a hero, is their own helplessness, their own humanity, their own ordinariness, despite the fact that she is, in fact, an exemplary soldier, quite good at what she does, people look at her and they see failure, look at her and see all the ways in which she is not their Ana.

People do not tell her that of course—or, most of them—but she can see it in their eyes, knows that they look at her and see a child dressing up in her mother’s clothes, because that is what she is to them, still, only Ana Amari’s daughter. That stings, it does, but she gets good, over the years, at learning to accept it, gets good at understanding that the people around her can never understand Ana, in the same way that she can never understand the world before the Crisis, because to hear tell of something and to know it, to live it, are two very different things. Her world is different from the world around her in a fundamental way, always has been, and always will be.

None of this is to say that she accepts it, because she does not, not exactly. Understanding and acceptance are not, after all, the same thing. Fareeha thinks it cruel, thinks it unfair, thinks it wrong, that she is seen not as her own person, but as an extension of someone else, and she will not force herself to try to accept that as a fact of life. Always, she will believe that she deserves to be treated better, and she will be right.

Still, it is better, she thinks, than the people who see her as an extension of her mother, the people for whom every good thing Fareeha does is, somehow, because _Ana_ would have done it, and not because of Fareeha herself. That is a special sort of pain, of erasure, because it is one thing to be seen as she is, and found wanting next to the specter of her mother, given that she knows that Ana the real woman could not measure up to the mythos that has been built around her, and it is quite another for people to see Fareeha, to acknowledge that what she is doing is good, is right, and to take that from her, and give it, somehow, to her mother. Not everything which Fareeha does, everything which she is, belongs to Ana. Not all the good she has put into this world was the inevitable result of her birth. Much of what Fareeha has achieved, she has worked hard for, and it hurts to see that erased because of her name, because people think that somehow, having Ana for a mother has made her naturally the woman she is, stalwart, brave, and true.

At least some of what Fareeha has achieved has been by her own merit, through her own suffering. Her mother did not want, after all, for Fareeha to become a soldier, did not condone it, or pave the way for Fareeha to rise up in the ranks of the Air Force, and it certainly was not Ana who served with distinction in Fareeha’s place, was not she who threw herself on top of a fellow soldier, and in the process lost an arm. That was Fareeha, that was _Fareeha_ , and although she does not think it glorious, does not think it praiseworthy, particularly, thinks it only right to save someone else—it hurts to know that others, believing it so, ascribe that _bravery_ , as they call it, that _loyalty_ and _sacrifice_ to her mother.

(As a sniper, Ana was never in a position to do that for another soldier, and Fareeha does not know if she would have. Worse, Fareeha does not know if she would do it again—knows that she wants to believe she would, and knows, too, that having felt the pain of it, gone through the rehab, she might hesitate, might waver, might flinch, and even one moment of hesitation would have been too many, would have meant the death of the man she saved.)

In truth, it was no sacrifice, for Fareeha had not the time to reconsider it, but still, it hurts, still, it feels like something is being taken from her, when people tell her that her mother would be proud, would have done the same.

At least, she supposes, they do not think her a hero, too. At least they do not think she is perfect, that she is beyond reproach, because she knows that she was terrified, as she did it, knows, too, of the guilt she feels when she misses a shot, knows that innocents have been hurt—likely because of her—and that she has had to take lives. She thinks she understands, if only for a moment, how it broke her mother, to be told that what she did in war was a good thing. It is not good, to end a life, will never feel that way, even when it is necessary, is just, and after all of the death, even saving others feels a bit hollow.

Or, not hollow but—it feels like it does not make up for what she has also done, could not begin to.

But she cannot protest that, because most do not see even this as belonging to her, see it as an extension, again, of her mother’s legacy, of her mother’s sacrifice—a death that they do not know never was—and so they ascribe it to her.

Silently, Fareeha resents that, just a little, even as Helix announces her recruitment by listing her as _Ana Amari_ _’s daughter, the hero_ , in the puff piece they put out, in order to please their investors. Silently, she wishes that she could exist apart from her mother’s name, even if she believes that Ana’s work is worth continuing, is something that the world needs. Silently, she swallows all of it, the bitterness and the hurt and the anger and the longing, because she is afraid, in that moment, that at least some of her detractors have been right, that at least some of her advancement has been because she is Ana’s daughter. Another war hero might have been seen as too costly to outfit with the military grade prosthetic Helix grants her, another might have been given a desk job within their organization, another might even have ended up where she is, now, but their recruitment would have been seen as routine, as procedure, not a coup de grace, as Fareeha’s is.

It scares her, to admit it to herself, but her mother’s legacy, her mother’s name, it might not have driven her, but it has, she knows now, opened doors for her which might have otherwise been closed, has made others to look at her and see the potential for a _hero_ , when she is just a woman, just a soldier like any other. Yes, she is good at what she does, yes, she is among the best of the best, but never can she disentangle what people believe of Ana from what they think of her, never can she make herself exist wholly separate from all of that.

It scares her, and on her worse days it shakes her, makes her doubt how much of her achievements are truly her own, and how much is good fortune, is an accident of birth.

Joining Overwatch does not help this.

When Fareeha answers the Recall, she knows already that Overwatch is not perfect, is not, in many ways, even _good_ , knows what it did to its heroes, knows the ways in which it failed the rest of the world. Yet she feels compelled, anyway, to go, even knowing that the message was for her mother, not for her, was sent to old agents, and she knows what the others will think, knows that they will believe her there because of Ana—and in a way, she is there because of her, is there because of a message sent _to_ her—will think that she is trying to be her mother, or fill in her mother’s shoes, when that is not true. She is here because she knows just how Overwatch failed, when her mother was there, knows how it failed the world and itself, and she wants it to be better, wants, at least, for some part of the legacy with which she has been saddled for her entire life to become true, if she can make it so. It would be more tolerable, then, she thinks selfishly; more altruistically, it would be be better for the world, for Overwatch to be truly good.

She is here, and she knows that when the others look at her, they see her mother first. It hurts, because of course it does, hurts in all the ways it always has, but worse, it gnaws at her, in a way that has become familiar since that Helix article, feeds the voice in the back of her mind that tells her she is not here because she is good enough, is not here because she has earned it, like everyone else has, is only riding her mother’s coattails, and ought to go on home.

At Helix, she could ignore that voice, because it was easy to look at her coworkers and see that she was as good as any of them, but Overwatch is more complicated. Certainly, Fareeha cannot time travel, and she is not a cyborg, either, has not cured death, or been genetically modified. She is not even famous, like some of them are, is known because of her mother’s actions, and not her own. No one ever says anything, no one intimates that she is lesser, and they seem to respect her, but she is her own critic, on the nights when she cannot sleep, when she has made some mistake or a mission has gone bad. Some part of her tells the rest that she does not belong here, not really, and that one day the rest of them will figure it out, will see that she is not the woman her mother was, and ask that she leave them, go back to where she belongs.

After all, these people knew her mother—even if they did not know her in the same way Fareeha did—and it seems they still think her a hero, think her good and brave in ways that Fareeha does not feel herself to be.

It is a terrible thing, the worry that somehow, she is a fraud, has faked her way to this point, has fooled even herself into believing that she is here by her own merit, because she is not Ana, never has been, cannot ever be the woman they think her mother was.

This is her dream, to be here, is not her mother’s dream for her, it is _her_ attempt at doing the thing she is good at, being in the kind of world where she feels she belongs, and she knows she cannot leave this, cannot become a civilian, because war is all that she has ever known, but sometimes, she thinks she should. Sometimes, she thinks that she cannot possibly ever be the kind of woman her mother was, not when McCree, whose aim borders on the supernatural, tells her that her mother was the very best, not when Reinhardt still tells stories of her bravery, not when everyone tells her that her mother would be proud, to see her here.

Ana is not proud. Fareeha knows that, but she cannot tell the others to _stop saying that_ , because they do not know it. Ana hates that this is the life Fareeha has chosen for herself, hates that she has decided that peace is something that will never belong to her.

(Yet another way that Fareeha feels a liar. She is surrounded, now, by people who mourn her mother, and she cannot even begin to tell them the truth.)

What can Fareeha say? Nothing that will make her feel better. So she smiles and she bears it, when they tell her that _You_ _’re just like your mother_ , swallows the resentment she feels, the unease, does not insist that she is her own woman, because she cannot do so, anymore, feels she has lost the right to claim that she has earned all of this. They mean well, they all do, when they tell her that, and so she chokes it down.

She chokes it down, she chokes it down, she chokes it down, until one day, she is alone with Angela, beneath a starless sky, and she says to Angela that she worries about them being here, worries that Overwatch, with all their weapons, will only worsen the tension in the city, will prevent peace, rather than inspiring it, and Angela turns to her, considering, says, “You know, you’re nothing like your mother.” A compliment, and one she means.

(Once, she compared Fareeha to Ana, and that was a compliment, too. She, more than the rest, seems to remember that Ana was a complicated woman, not all good or all bad.)

“I’m not,” Fareeha agrees, and it feels like a good thing, in that moment, rather than a weight around her neck, “I’m not her.” Her heart sings with it, the realization that maybe Ana brought her here, maybe Ana inspired her, maybe Ana is the one people see, when they look at her, but _she_ is not Ana, is only herself, is her own person, with her own path. For her whole life, Fareeha has never been able to say this, has never had someone with whom she could be honest about how she feels about her mother, and now, suddenly, she does, and it is an unburdening, a release of tension she did not even realize she was carrying, to be able at last to acknowledge that she resents the comparison, that she does not want to be her mother, never has.

Later, her doubt may return to her, but this is true: she is nothing like her mother, and her mother did not bring her here, to this place, her mother did not wholly shape her into the woman she is today, even if their lives will always be entwined, even if her mother’s legacy cannot be fully disentangled from Fareeha’s own. They are two people, and at least one other person can see that, can look at Fareeha and recognize _her_ , not Ana’s shadow.

Never will Fareeha understand what her mother is to most everyone else, never will she be able to know what it means to live in a world without the Omnic Crisis, without the weight of Ana Amari, the hero who arose from that, but she knows this—she is not her mother. She is not her mother, and that does not make her any lesser.

There are moments that shape generations, shape lifetimes, and this is one of hers.

**Author's Note:**

> halfway thru writing this i was like Hmm i seem to have some unexamined resentment abt [my own family bullshit] LMFAO but anyway... it was fuel to the fire or whatever bc i wrote 5k words in under 2.5hrs with no plan
> 
> anyway, i love fareeha more than life itself and she deserves the world. please someone excavate that MASSIVE chip from her shoulder
> 
> lmk ur thoughts pls if u enjoyed this! i got a really nice comment today on smtg (thank u anonymous user buckets) and it made my day


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